NYPD Reveals More Than It Should?

Our own boys in blue have got into something of a spat with the NYPD over information that our police has yet to release. A briefing was given to security experts and leading business figures in New York that revealed detailed information about the London bombings. The police here are understandably miffed about this and say it's not helpful to their investigation. The Americans have said that they've been doing this kind of thing for years and that all the information they revealed was unclassified and open source material. So there.

The NYPD later admitted making a mistake. Not with the actual details, but in saying that those details had been cleared by the Met.

The biggest revelation is that mobile phones may have been used as detonators for the devices leading experts to again question whether the four dead bombers had the intention of martyring themselves:

If mobile phones had been used, it would lend weight to the theory that the bombers did not know they were being used as suicide bombers by a mastermind. Prof Hans Michels, an explosives expert at Imperial College London, said: "Suicide bombers do not need timers to set off their bombs, nor do they need alarm signals from mobile phones, as they are likely to set off their deadly weapons themselves once they are in their dreadful target scenario."

So again we're back to the theory that rather than a determined attack by zealots intent on a glorious afterlife, London is in fact facing a hit and run campaign by incompetent wannabes.

The BBC picks up the story here, but there is more detail in the FT. There's a brief summary of the pros and cons of releasing this kind of information early here.